


You Would Ban the Music of Heartbeats

by StarblazeAndSolaris



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Extended Metaphors, Oblivious Arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 16:05:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1516697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarblazeAndSolaris/pseuds/StarblazeAndSolaris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Arthur is injured in the Once and Future Queen, he finds himself a little bored, and asks that Merlin entertain him.  He gets a bed-time story unlike any other, and one he will find himself incapable of forgetting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Would Ban the Music of Heartbeats

**Author's Note:**

> Sol: I don’t really like the ending of this all too much – it’s one of those infuriating sort-of-ambiguous ones that I almost never read. I think that might make me a bit of a hypocrite.
> 
> Star: Nah, it just makes you an idiot for writing something you actively dislike. I suppose we – well, you – could put together something of a sequel if there’s enough interest – an epilogue, perhaps? Or a sort of mini-sequel? Otherwise it wouldn’t exactly have much of a plot… Not that this does, to be honest…
> 
> Sol: That’s an idea, I quite like that. Oh by the way, this is set just after the Once and Future Queen (Season 2, Episode 2). There’s a little bitty spoiler near the start.
> 
> Rating: K? K+? (Not sure why – I don’t think there’s anything rude in here.)  
> Genre: I want to say feels, but that’s too many internet memes. Hurt/Comfort & Friendship then.
> 
> Disclaimer: The BBC owns this – we can claim nothing.

The wound in Arthur’s chest was small but deep, and bled profusely despite Gaius’ bandages and herbs.  Merlin had washed and rebound it twice a day every day for the last three days – every day since the end of the jousting tournament in which the final battle had actually been Arthur against the assassin, and every day since he had received the injury.  Merlin thought of the spiked fist lance, and felt his own fist clench in the material of the gauze, pulling harder than was comfortable and making Arthur reprimand him.  An apologetic look was all the Prince received in reply, but the gauze was loosened, and the lanky manservant continued to dress the wound.

 

Once he was done, and Arthur had been given water and fed a hot broth as sustenance so as not to upset his damaged stomach, the prince lay back with a groan and allowed Merlin to pull the covers up so as to cover his abdomen but leave his shoulders and bandaged chest bare.  Arthur pushed himself down into the soft support of the down pillows, and allowed himself a rare sigh of relief.  Merlin, on the other hand, shoved away from the bed and went about closing the shutters, checking that everything was relatively tidy (or at least somewhere that Arthur won’t trip over it when he crawls out of bed in the morning, against Gaius’ direct orders) and snuffing out the candles.  As he approached the last one, directly above Arthur’s bed, he heard a pompous order from the cocoon of blankets and luxury inside the curtains.

“Stay a while, Merlin; even your imbecilic company is better than staring at the ceiling.”

“I beg your pardon?  Has that tincture gone to your head, Sire?” laughed Merlin.  “You want _me_ to keep you company?”  Arthur scowled, his usual demeanour making a reappearance.

“Never, _Mer_ lin!  I’ve changed my mind – you may leave now.  Don’t you have stables to be mucking out?”

There was a moment of silence before Merlin spoke, his voice soft and hesitant.

“I could – I suppose, your pratliness – tell you a bedtime story.  It’s what my mother always did when I was ill or injured.”

“I’m sure that was often then, considering your infernal clumsiness.  Did you not wear out her repertoire?”  There was another moment of stilted hesitation before an arm swept out and pulled back the curtain, silently inviting him in.  Merlin shed his boots, settled himself comfortably cross-legged at the foot of the huge bed, and began to speak.

 

_There was once a young boy who lived in a small village at the meeting of two kingdoms.  He was much like the other boys, in many ways: he played with them; laughed with them; loved his mother as they did theirs.  But he was special, this boy, because he had a talent that none of the others had.  This boy, so ordinary, so average in all other ways, had music in every inch of him, from his fingertips to his toes, to his swathe of soft black hair.  A talent, a skill, a gods-given gift – all the boy knew was that it came as naturally to him as waking up in the morning, and that every moment spent practicing increased his abilities tenfold._

_But although his home was in name a part of one kingdom, the neighbouring kingdom, with its boundaries not a furlong from his door, had banned music and declared it evil, for it could stir rebellion and hatred against the crown as easily as it could send a babe to sleep in its mother’s arms._

_For fear of persecution, the boy’s mother begged him to keep his skills secret, and so he did, sharing them only with his best friend and the birds as he practised in the forest.  And he practiced many things: singing, beating time, strumming the old, third-hand fiddle or whittling a new set of panpipes (for each set, once used, were burnt in the hearth to ensure the secrecy of his gifts).  The boy and his friend would talk and laugh, or the boy would play while his comrade danced in clumsy, youthful joy._

_And so they grew, talking and playing and living the days away as they turned from the innocence of children to the maturity of men, and they began to understand the potential consequences of the boy’s actions, should they ever be discovered.  They vowed to be careful, to hide all evidence as they had burnt panpipes in their youth, and they swore to be loyal to each other above all else._

_Eventually, however, as all stories go, the world turned and could not remain in that same idyllic place that children live.  The boy, now a man, was sent away by his mother to find a new home and work in the capital of the neighbouring kingdom, in the house of her brother.  He gave his friend a token on a leather loop, said goodbye to the villagers, and set out with their well-wishes ringing in his ears._

_He arrived in the city proper, and strode up to the castle where his uncle lived and studied as a medicinal man, a peasant of high rank, serving the royal family.  But upon his arrival, he witnessed a bard cut down in the street for his performance of a tinkling tune on assorted cowbells and other metal constructs.  It was new music, strange music, and fascinating until the sword of a guard fell and intrigue was replaced by horror as the bard’s head rolled._

 

“Just for playing music in the street!  Killed without warning, no chance to leave or explain himself!?”  Arthur shook his head in disgust, uncaring as his blond hair rubbed into frizz against the pillow.  Merlin gave him an unreadable look, before breathing in deeply and returning to his story.

_The man fled to his uncle’s chambers, and took refuge in the safety of his new room – which, although it was luxury beyond anything in his old village, felt cold and hostile to all that he embodied._

 

“It’s most cruel that he can’t even enjoy a proper bedroom because of some soldier’s careless execution,” Arthur frowned.

“Are you ever going to keep interrupting every two sentences, _Sire_?  Because I have no intention of trying to speak over your loud mouth,” Merlin sniped, and Arthur shot him a stern look.

“You will stay, and you will finish this tale, Merlin.  Honestly, I’ve never had a more impertinent or incompetent manservant – it’s no surprise your chores are done so shabbily, if you begin but never complete them.”  Merlin rolled his eyes, but continued to speak in that soothing tenor of his as Arthur lay back into the pillows.

 

_Under his uncle’s instruction, the man hid his music, practicing only during the busiest, loudest parts of the day, and then only quietly, but he could not give it up.  He could no more surrender those few, beautiful minutes every afternoon than he could cease to breathe of his own accord.  On occasion he even crept out into the forest to whittle a new set of panpipes, or strolled out with a basket to “collect herbs” for his uncle, fiddle tucked safely beneath a grass-stained rag.  At these times, he liked to stand while playing, performing for the birds and beasts and trees as he stepped lightly where the music took him, dancing across a clearing or along the lake water’s edge._

_Then the man gained a new position in the royal household (although he still believed the castle to be far too large for any single family to_ live _in).  It happened after the wife of a murdered bard forced entry to the king’s banquet, set on revenge for the death of her husband.  The man pushed the prince from the path of a dagger, and was given the position of servant._

_This irked the man, for it deprived him of time in which to study his passion, although it did increase the amount of money he could save to take back to his mother in their little town, and the added salary allowed him to buy a gift for his childhood friend.  Despite his misgivings, the man did his duty to the prince, and the wheel of time turned._

_Years passed in which the man kept his secret, while he and the prince became closer.  Only a few times did the man have the chance to return to his town, and he treasured those brief moments of reconciliation with his previous life – but it was not his life now, and the man always returned, faithful as a dog, to the side of the prince.  But every moment in which his mind was not occupied by conversation, or chores, or surreptitious tasks asked of him by the princess or her maidservant, his mind returned to music, and he pondered the question of how he might tell his prince, someday, of his passion and love for the one art considered treason._

 

Merlin fell silent, and Arthur’s voice quickly replaced his servant’s.

“Well?  Carry on.”

“That’s it,” Merlin snapped, suddenly irritated.  “That is all I know of that story – there is no ending.”  Arthur frowned.

“That’s ridiculous – every tale must end, and I demand to know what happened to the boy.  Did he tell the prince in the end?”

“I _don’t know_ ,” hissed Merlin, now inexplicably angry.  “I would assume that depends on how much of a _brat_ the prince is!”  The look Arthur gave him was shrewd, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“You’re talking nonsense again, Merlin.  If you can’t finish the story, you can take my chain mail and armour to the blacksmith’s to be fixed.”  Merlin huffed, but did as he was told now that Arthur wasn’t probing for more of his impromptu barding.  He slipped his boots back on, collected the pile of armour from the chair and the dented pauldron and chest plate from the table before backing his way out of the room, nearly dropping everything as he struggled to open the door with his elbow.  Arthur watched the door thud shut behind him, then shut his eyes in search of rest.  It was a long time in coming.

 

**_Finis_ **


End file.
